Steam says I have 238 games. Ubisoft has 100 games listed on Steam, yet "Beyond Good and Evil" is the only one of their products blighting my account. So by all means please make fewer aaa games. That will eventually free up developers for games I might actually enjoy.

The market for good writing in games - not the drivel that Bioware churns out, but something aimed at emotionally mature adults - isn't that large. A subscription fee that is basically equal to a month of Netflix and Amazon prime will keep curious readers away if Funcom seriously hoped to pull in non gamers. They really needed to emulate either EVE or Guild Wars sub options, but it looks like the lure of WoW will ruin another MMO.

The comic series was enjoyable for quite awhile, but the tv series definitely wasn't. I usually like Telltale and the trailers for this look good. Hopefully it goes on sale next week to make my decision easier.

Fion wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 14:09:But I agree, Funcom does have a reputation. They used to be my favorite MMOG house, mostly because of Anarchy Online (which is noted for having one of the worst launches in the industry and the most bugs in it's first six months than you could ever foreseeable count), it also had an amazing setting and very innovative features that are considered not only common but necessary in modern MMOGs (instancing, link-items-to-chat, dynamic spawning, 360' flight, just to name a few).

One has to wonder though why Funcom has had several years to fix fundamental (as Mac put it) features of their latest game AoC such as the sieges when you have other companies like Arenanet with not only working sieges, but extremely fun, polished, deep and strategic server vs. server (vs. server) PvP months before the game even launches. PvP so good it not only rivals DAoC's RvR, but surpasses it in many ways.. and the game isn't even out yet!

It makes me think many of the great folks at Funcom somehow don't know what they are doing, or the leadership doesn't have an even remotely defined structure or list of goals. It's just.. baffling. That said I wish them all the luck in the world. I've been interacting with many of the great folks there for ages (since early beta of Anarchy Online) and most are dedicated, intelligent and very creative.

They remind me of Troika, since they both (with the exception of doomed WoWclone Conan) made interesting games that never worked properly. It's sad that the people trying to make games I'd like to play can't make those games actually playable.

The stories and writing are very good. This makes the voice acting much better since the actors are speaking naturally rather than trying to read comic book dialogue for 14 year olds (a la Bioware). I was very happy to see they've removed leveling like EVE, and adopted the Guild Wars deck system. The tactical choices of 7 active & 7 passive skills is much more interesting than the drudgery of managing 82 skill bars.

The bad parts were the glitched quests and a surprising amount of collision problems. I thought it was "lag" at first but I'd frequently get stuck on invisible objects in the middle of a hallway. I can't see all the bugs being fixed soon.

While I wish the game well, I think the pricing model guarantees failure. Either free to play like Guild Wars, or monthly with nearly free client like EVE would've been much better. I'm not going to pay $100 to help them beta test for the next 3 months.

The beginning had some rough edges with pacing, too much time spent watching Sly ride elevators, but I still rank it up there with classics like Deus Ex & No One Lives Forever. I don't expect to see a sequel though the reasons listed by the author make my head hurt: Anachronox is of an age when publishers could still take risks on bonkers ideas, but too many of those ideas didn't see adequate financial returns. Since then, the industry has grown, and conservatism's understandably grown with it.

It's sickening that publishers won't take "risks" on cheap original games but they'll gladly flush hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet on horrible WoWclones.

Dev wrote on May 30, 2012, 21:07:Thank goodness, perhaps the franchise will improve now, instead of continually dig itself a deeper hole. Also maybe they will let lucasarts do cool star wars games again.

How do you improve on shite? The one and only reason Star Wars ever got as big as it did was because it was a technological marvel in the 70's. It was all dreck. And I love the fact that Alec Guiness was so public about that. I'll admit the original Star Wars and Empire weren't bad, afte that everything else went severly downhill.

And Empire wasn't even directed or written (the screenplay wasn't) by Lucas. So his reputation really just comes from the first one which was astonishing visually compared to things like Star Trek. The story is every bad Bioware game ever made - the chosen one single-handedly defeats the ancient evil that is threatening the universe.

A developer I really like doing something with a franchise I really like? Wow. I can't recall that actually happening before. This and D & D are probably the only 2 things worth licensing for a game since you're getting a fully functional role playing system without an overdose of rigid lore (Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, etc).